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Free to Succeed: A Brief History of School Choice

February 3, 2020/in Education, Elections, Policy, Politics/by The Daily Signal

Perhaps it’s the title, but at first glance, Milton Friedman’s 1955 essay, “The Role of Government in Education,” seems unassuming. To many Americans, the role of government in education is self-evident and impregnable. So, given public schools are run by the government, an essay on the government’s role in education seems like it would be both obvious (and boring).

In reality, Friedman’s argument was neither obvious nor boring. In “The Role of Government in Education,” Friedman argued that basic free-market principles—such as competition and consumer freedom—should be reintroduced into the education marketplace.

Friedman’s argument was not necessarily new or radical. For the first eight decades after the American Revolution, parents were the primary drivers of what and how their children learned. According to Market Education, written by the late Andrew Coulson, this “unofficial school choice” later dissolved amidst burgeoning anti-Catholic immigrant sentiment and a massive push for mandatory, state-funded, public education.

By the time Friedman wrote “The Role of Government in Education,” state governments essentially had developed monopolies on education, with children assigned to public schools within the district boundaries where they lived. This iron triangle of public schooling—government administration, compulsion and financing of education—had weakened important market forces and limited parents’ power to control their children’s education. Private schools offered an alternative to public school system, but many low- and middle-income families could not afford to pay both the taxes that support public schools and the tuition required of private schools.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

So although the history of American education reflects aspects of school choice, education freedom had nearly disappeared by 1955. Children attended their neighborhood public schools even if those schools were a poor fit.

Friedman’s essay argued that parents, not the state, should makes the decisions when it came to their children’s education. Instead of government officials mandating students attend given schools, competition between schools would encourage greater innovation, efficiency, and effectiveness. Parents, untethered from arbitrary school district boundaries, then could vote with their feet. As Friedman put it: “Parents could express their views about schools directly, by withdrawing their children from one school and sending them to another, to a much greater extent than is now possible.”

Friedman’s essay also proposed a voucher program, where the state would take the money that would have been spent to educate students at public schools and give it to parents to cover tuition at a private school of their choice. Fundamentally, he argued to separate the financing of education from the delivery of services.

Friedman’s ideas were first implemented in Wisconsin in 1989 when state Assemblywoman Polly Williams authored the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, —the first modern-day private school choice legislation. The bipartisan legislation enabled low-income minority families to use vouchers to pay for tuition at the city’s private schools.

Later, 18 states and the District of Columbia launched similar voucher programs. The same number of states now offer tax-credit scholarships, which enable individuals and businesses to receive tax credits for donating to nonprofits that fund private school scholarships.

In 2011—dubbed “the year of school choice” because 12 states passed legislation that either created new school choice programs or expanded programs that already existed—Arizona implemented the county’s first education savings account option.

Education savings accounts allow parents to use taxpayer funds to pay for tuition, tutors, textbooks, and other education expenses. Friedman had suggested this as well during a 2003 interview in which he spoke of issuing “partial vouchers.”

Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and North Carolina have since followed Arizona’s lead and implemented their own Education Savings Account options.

Around the same time Milwaukee passed the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, public charter schools—another key player in the fight for school choice—started to take off. Public charter schools operate with greater autonomy and at less cost than their traditional public school counterparts. Because they are independent from traditional public school curriculum requirements, charter schools can tailor their environments and curricula to their students’ needs.

Despite these gains, pushback continues. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case that dealt with tax-credit scholarship programs. The case’s ruling, which is expected this summer, could shape the future of the school choice discussion in the United States.

But Friedman’s legacy endures, and this year’s National School Choice Week is a reminder that progress continues, but by no means is the fight for authentic education freedom over yet.

COMMENTARY BY

Jack Rosenwinkel

Jack Rosenwinkel is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research. Twitter: @lindseymburke.

Jude Schwalbach

Jude Schwalbach is a research assistant in education policy at The Heritage Foundation.

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A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EXCLUSIVE: Google Employees Used Company Resources To Organize Anti-Trump Resistance Events

February 3, 2020/in Elections, Featured, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Caller

EDITORS NOTE: What follows is an excerpt from Peter Hasson’s new book “The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, qnd Big Tech’s War on Conservatives” (order here on Amazon).

Google employees interpreted Trump’s election as a terrible outcome that they should have done more to prevent the American people from choosing and something they would work hard to make sure didn’t happen again. Indeed, I obtained documents and communications showing Google employees organizing anti-Trump protests using internal company channels, company time, and company office space.

“If your stomach turns when you consider a Trump presidency, I urge you not to let this moment pass quietly,” one Google employee wrote in an email to coworkers, urging them to attend an anti-Trump protest in San Francisco ten days after Trump’s election.

Another Google employee in March 2017 hosted an anti-Trump resistance event at Google to flood the White House mail room with anti-Trump postcards. “Hi all,” the email began, “I’m participating in #TheIdesofTrump, a national movement to send POTUS a postcard on March 15 expressing opposition to him.” The message stated that employees had reserved a room at Google’s San Francisco headquarters for Google employees to gather and write the anti-Trump postcards. The invitation included the anti-Trump activists’ mission statement:

We the people, in vast numbers, from all corners of the world, will overwhelm the man in his unpopularity and failure. We will show the media and the politicians what standing with him—and against us—means. And most importantly, we will bury the White House in pink slips, all informing Donnie that he’s fired. Each of us—every protester from every march, each congress-calling citizen, every boycotter, volunteer, donor, and petition signer—if each of us writes even a single postcard and we put them all in the mail on the same day, March 15th, well: you do the math.

No alternative fact or Russian translation will explain away our record-breaking, officially-verifiable, warehouse-filling flood of fury.

“I’ll bring the postcards and the stamps,” the employee added. “You just bring your woke selves.” It bears repeating that the employees used their work email addresses, a company listserv, and company office space to organize their anti-Trump activism, because there is absolutely no chance that a Google employee could get away with organizing pro-Trump activism using Google resources on company time. If someone tried, their coworkers would run them out of the company, if their bosses didn’t fire them first.

One Google employee even reported a colleague to human resources for supporting Jordan Peterson’s objection to state-mandated pronoun laws in Canada. “One Googler raised a concern that you appeared to be promoting and defending Jordan Peterson’s comments about transgender pronouns, and expressed concern that this made them feel unsafe at work,” HR told the employee in an email, which noted that other Google employees were also “offended by [your] perceived challenge to our diversity programs.”

COLUMN BY

PETER J. HASSON

Peter J. Hasson is the editor of the investigative group at the Daily Caller News Foundation and the author of “The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Big Tech’s War on Conservatives.“

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Burying ‘dead white males’: Will the deconstructionists win the battle for ‘Western Civilization’?

February 3, 2020/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities

In the on-going debate over whether “dead white males” like William Shakespeare are needed anymore in English courses, Sheffield University, one of England’s leading institutions of higher education, says No.

According to a report in The Telegraph, an induction video for first-year students asserts that “academia has historically been a white dominated space” and encourages students to call out “racial bias” in the curriculum.

Writers like Geoffrey Chaucer, George Eliot (a woman, actually), Charles Dickens and Samuel Beckett are described as white writers whose works survive in the curriculum because they “simply fit better” with academic culture.

“Many of the writers, thinkers and academics who are traditionally studied are white too,” the video says. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the ones producing the best work, rather that they simply better fit into an academic culture that’s affected by the same racial biases that we see in the rest of society.”

On the other side of the pond, Yale University, one of America’s oldest and finest universities, has ditched its famous art history survey course. Apparently students are disturbed by the “overwhelming” whiteness, maleness, and straightness of canonical Western artists. Its replacement will examine art in relation to “questions of gender, class and ‘race’” as well as capitalism and climate change, according to the instructor.

These are just two examples of an academic scramble to assert that Western civilization, if it exists at all, is just a chronicle of racism, sexism and imperialism. As a result, young women and men who have the privilege of studying at some of the world’s great centres of learning are being cheated out of their past. They are being denied the intellectual tools for understanding themselves and the society in which they live. Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, wrote a very dead white male, Tacitus, about how the Roman Empire treated subject nations: “where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.” Some universities are a bit like that.

The desolation is eerily similar to the setting of one of the last century’s most famous sci fi novels, A Canticle for Leibowitz. A nuclear holocaust is followed by the Simplification, a violent backlash against technology. Literate people are killed by rampaging mobs of “Simpletons”. Illiteracy becoms almost universal and books are destroyed. In one of the novel’s most imaginative touches, Benedictine monks in the 26th Century painstakingly illuminate copies of electrical diagrams which no one understands any more.

We’re not there yet, but the possibility of getting an education in “the best which has been thought and said in the world”, as 19th Century critic Matthew Arnold put it, is becoming increasingly remote.

Of course, 150 years later, with more access to other cultures, “the best” needs to include contributions from India, China, Japan and other civilisations. But “Western civilisation” is far more than a reeking dung heap of gender and racial bias.

A report by Stanley Kurtz, a cultural commentator, reviews the history of American universities’ repudiation of “Western civilization” in an excellent short book, The Lost History of Western Civilization, published by the National Association of Scholars. (Available on Amazon and also as a free PDF.)

He uses the disintegration of humanist scholarship at Stanford University as a lens to analyse sceptics of the achievements of the West.

In January 1987 students chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go” kick-started the erosion of Stanford’s commitment to “the canon”. They were protesting a course called Western Culture which was required for first-year students. It was eventually abolished.

One of the main guns trained on the status quo, Kurtz says, was an influential article written in 1982 by historian Gilbert Allardyce which traced the idea of “Western Civilization” back to World War I. Allardyce described it, Kurtz writes, as “a modern invention devised during World War I as a way of hoodwinking young American soldiers into fighting and dying in the trenches of Europe.” Western Civilization was “a thinly disguised form of neo-imperial war propaganda”.

Kurtz expertly debunks this argument, which found enthusiastic supporters and allies amongst historians. He reviews the most influential historians of the 19th Century in the United States – the Scot William Robertson and the Frenchman François Guizot — and shows that they had demonstrated the existence of a distinctive Western Civilization long before “the Great War”. It’s a fascinating history, and Kurtz deploys it to critique contemporary developments as well. Citing a number of other conservative scholars, he argues that the soul of the nation is at stake:

We’ll argue, among other things, that: 1) Postmodern academic skepticism, and the broader collapse of faith it reflects, has backed us into a corner in which inflated accusations of racism, bigotry, and genocide are virtually the only remaining sources of collective purpose; 2) Postmodern academic skepticism has become a petrified orthodoxy every bit as due for critique as the Aristotelianism of Hobbes’s day; 3) So-called multiculturalism isn’t really about preserving traditional cultures at all—instead “multiculturalism” has ushered in a radically new sort of culture in which perpetually expanding accusations of racism, bigotry, and genocide stand as quasi-religious ends in themselves; and 4) The American experiment cannot survive without checking or reversing these trends.

If “Western Civilization”, which has a history stretching back 2,500 years, can be deconstructed, so can its nihilistic critique, which has a history stretching back 40 years. In the long run, Western Civilization will survive.

But how long is the long run? The monks in A Canticle for Leibowitz laboured over their mysterious scraps for generations. “The Memorabilia was there, and it was given to them by duty to preserve, and preserve it they would if the darkness in the world lasted ten more centuries, or even ten thousand years.”

Surely ending this deconstructionist madness will not take that long!

COLUMN BY

MICHAEL COOK

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the US where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked as a book editor and magazine editor and has published articles in magazines and newspapers in the US, the UK and Australia. Currently he is the editor of BioEdge, a newsletter about bioethics, and MercatorNet. He also writes a bioethics column for Australasian Science and contributes occasional op-ed pieces to newspapers and websites in the US, UK and Australia.

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The Stunning Sham Impeachment of Donald J. Trump

February 2, 2020/in Commentary, Elections, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Amil Imani

From day one, when Donald Trump became the president of the United States, the entire leftist media, law enforcement establishment, former President Obama, and minions of former President Obama, to include Hillary Clinton, Hollywood celebrities, and the Democratic Party had one mission: To force President Trump out of office. They drove investigation after investigation, and after three years, along with tens of millions of dollars spent at taxpayers’ expense, they found nothing on him to force him out. ZERO.

The Russian hoax turned out to be a hoax. Trump said “[Special counsel Robert] Mueller showed the Democrats not only have nothing, now they have less than nothing.”

But that did not please the appetite of hungry leftist wolves who were after blood. Since the House of Representatives is controlled by the Democrats, they contrived a fake excuse to impeach Trump.

“House Democrats have long wanted to overturn the votes of 63 million Americans. They have determined that they must impeach President Trump because they cannot legitimately defeat him at the ballot box. The Democrats’ use of a phone call with the president of Ukraine – with a transcript the president himself released — served as their excuse for this partisan, gratuitous, and pathetic attempt to overthrow the Trump administration and reverse the results of the 2016 election.”

It was 100% sham.

Even the Democrats’ witnesses stories were based on hearsay and what they had heard and what they had been told, but no one seemed to be able to offer direct “I heard it directly from the president himself” testimony — except, of course, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who testified that the president had told him directly that he wanted no quid pro quo.

Nevertheless, the House — on a purely partisan basis, — voted to impeach President Trump.

So, what would be “fair” in the Senate? Democrats’ demand for witnesses who did not testify in the House is absurd. A Democrat majority of the House impeached the president based on the evidence that they presented. That’s the evidence that should be presented to the Senate — no more, no less.

After the impeachment, Nancy Pelosi did something that had never been done before. She refused to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a month. When a reporter asked about the possibility of her not forwarding the articles of impeachment, she quickly shut him down, and in so doing, also proved the impeachment fiasco had less to do with “protecting democracy” and more to do with partisan political motivation and the November 2020 general election.

President Trump, during three years in office has done more for this country than any other in our lifetime.

We have the best economy in decades. Highest stock market numbers ever. Lowest unemployment amongst Blacks, Hispanics and Asians, ever. Trade victories with Japan and China, now coming into view.

More equity in NATO cost-sharing. Massive reduction of regulations and bureaucratic red tape. Conservative judicial court appointees that will stop activist overreach. All without drawing a salary, and while putting up with non-stop harassment.

The Democrats, instead of letting American voters decide if President Trump stays or goes in November, went ahead with a sham impeachment based on rumors and hearsay — and now it likely will cost them their electoral viability in many other races.

Trump’s impeachment had absolutely nothing to do with a Russian hoax or Ukrainian fiasco. It was about Trump winning the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton. Hillary simply could not accept the loss. Then she mobilized her radical army to take Trump out by hook or crook. These Democrats wanted to impeach President Trump in the worst possible way. Literally.

They wanted to impeach him even before he took the oath of office. They’ve called for impeachment every day he’s been on the job. Democrats have asserted they can impeach him multiple times. Hard to believe we live in America! Democrats are desperate and at their wits’ end.

Since the Democrats tragically failed in their Constitutional obligation to provide clear evidence of treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors, bearing true faith and upholding allegiance can only bring about one ethical vote.

“No.”

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: Their calls for violence created ANTIFA

February 2, 2020/in Commentary, Elections, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

EDITORS NOTE: This is the eighth in a series titled Decadent Democrats. You may read the previous installments here:

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Pedophilia to Sex with Animals

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Electing a Dream ‘Queer Latina’ Candidate to No Incarceration For Drug Use of Any Kind

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Enemies of America are Our Best Friends Forever

DECADENT DEMOCRATS — From Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globe Diatribe to Abortion to Climate Change [+Videos]

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: From Creating Weak Men and Disorderly Women to Making Sex a Biological Reality Illegal

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: From the Party of Abortion and Allah Akbar to the 2020 Right to Life March and death of terrorist Soleimani

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Party of Marx, Mao and Mohammed

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” – Maxine Waters (D-CA)

Tweet “At @MoonPaliceBooks I just found the [ANTIFA: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray] book that strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.” – Keith Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General

“You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks.” ― Mark Bray, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook

Major consideration is being given to naming ANTIFA an “ORGANIZATION OF TERROR.” Portland is being watched very closely. Hopefully the Mayor will be able to properly do his job! – President Donald J. Trump on 17 August 2019

The first instances of violence against the election of Donald J. Trump began on January 20, 2017. Sara Ganim and Chris Welch in a May 3rd, 2019 CNN article titled Unmasking the leftist Antifa movement reported:

On the morning of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Keval Bhatt hunted through a closet in his parents’ Virginia home for the darkest clothes he could find.

The 19-year-old didn’t own much in black, the color he knew his fellow protesters would wear head to toe on the streets of Washington that day.

As Bhatt drove into the city for his first-ever protest, he hesitated.

“I thought, there’s a very good chance that I might get arrested, that my whole life could be radically altered in a negative way if I kept driving, and I was really close to turning around,” Bhatt told CNN. “But I think the rationale is that even if it did negatively affect my life, I had still contributed to this movement that was necessary. I was still making an effort to make other people’s lives better, even if it made my life worse, and once I realized that, I had no regrets.”

Bhatt joined protesters dressed completely in black, some with their faces covered by masks — a tactic known as “black bloc” that aims to unify demonstrators’ efforts and hide their identities.

And with them, Bhatt got arrested.

READ MORE.

Another protester is screaming at the crew smashing a limo. Lots of ppl here frustrated by actions of few: pic.twitter.com/CgSzqHZ3Lm

— Greg Krieg (@GregJKrieg) January 20, 2017

Since the inauguration of Donald J. Trump there have been numerous calls for violence as reported in the House of Representatives Political Violence Report. Among these calls for violence are:

Jun 4th, 2017 – Radical Anti-Trump, Terrorist, James Hodgkinson Shoots Up GOP Baseball Field
October 12th, 2018 – ANTIFA attacks GOP Headquarters in New York City
June 8th, 2018 – ANTIFA Takes Over Downtown Portland Wielding Weapons, Intimidating Citizens
October 15th, 2018 – Alec Baldwin: “We need to overthrow the government of U.S. under Donald Trump”
April 2nd, 2017 – WA: ANTIFA Clash with Trump Supporters at Pro-Rally
The impeachment proceedings.

ANTIFA violence continues today. Watch the following:

Watch: Hundreds of far-left activists, including antifa, swarmed New York City to demand the abolishment of transportation fares and law enforcement. The NYPD made numerous arrests. https://t.co/JWN5cL5XRN pic.twitter.com/f4F1NWLiMO

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) February 1, 2020

BREAKING: Far-left protestors and #antifa swarm the New York City subway system, chanting "f*ck the police."#FTP #J31 pic.twitter.com/yrRKfKaLJe

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 31, 2020

This was the City I worked so hard to reform. It’s heart breaking. https://t.co/lUizzE0fpD

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) February 1, 2020

CONCLUSION

ANTIFA is the militant arm of the Democrat Party, whether they admit it or not. ANTIFA is a Communist organization that is causing violence against anyone who supports the President, ICE and law enforcement in general. ANTIFA are anarchists.

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VIDEO: Senator Marco Rubio’s statement on ‘why I will not vote to remove the President’

February 2, 2020/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Elections, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

Florida Senator Marco Rubio released the following in an email:

On Friday, I released a statement on the ongoing impeachment trial explaining why I will not vote to remove the President — because doing so would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation. Read my full statement here and watch my video message here.

pic.twitter.com/oyMXo0SV0R

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 31, 2020

My Statement on the President’s Impeachment Trial

Voting to find the President guilty would not just be a condemnation of his action. If I vote guilty, I will be voting to remove a President from office for the first time in the 243-year history of our Republic.

When they decided to include impeachment in the Constitution, the Framers understood how disruptive and traumatic it would be. As Alexander Hamilton warned, impeachment will “agitate the passions of the whole community.”

This is why they decided to require the support of two thirds of the Senate to remove a President — we serve as a guardrail against partisan impeachment and against removal of a President without broad public support.

Leaders in both parties previously recognized that impeachment must be bipartisan and must enjoy broad public support. In fact, as recently as March of last year, Manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) said there would be “little to be gained by putting the country through” the “wrenching experience” of a partisan impeachment.

And yet, only a few months later, a partisan impeachment is exactly what the House produced.

This meant two Articles of Impeachment whose true purpose was not to protect the nation but rather to, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, stain the President’s record because “he has been impeached forever” and “they can never erase that.”

It now falls upon this Senate to take up what the House produced and faithfully execute our duties under the Constitution of the United States.

Why does impeachment exist?

As Manager Jerry Nadler (D-NY) reminded us Wednesday night, removal is not a punishment for a crime. Nor is removal supposed to be a way to hold Presidents accountable; that is what elections are for.

The sole purpose of this extraordinary power to remove the one person entrusted with all of the powers of an entire branch of government is to provide a last-resort remedy to protect the country. That is why Hamilton wrote that in these trials our decisions should be pursuing “the public good.”

That is why six weeks ago I announced that, for me, the question would not just be whether the President’s actions were wrong, but ultimately whether what he did was removable.

The two are not the same. Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office.

To answer this question, the first step was to ask whether it would serve the public good to remove the President, even if I assumed the President did everything the House alleges.

It was not difficult to answer that question on the charge of “Obstruction of Congress.” The President availed himself of legal defenses and constitutional privileges on the advice of his legal counsel. That is not an impeachable offense, much less a removable one.

Negotiations with Congress and enforcement in the courts, not impeachment, should be the front-line recourse when Congress and the President disagree on the separation of powers. But here, the House failed to go to court because, as Manager Schiff admitted, they did not want to go through a yearlong exercise to get the information they wanted. Ironically, they now demand that the Senate go through this very long exercise they themselves decided to avoid.

On the first Article of Impeachment, I reject the argument that “Abuse of Power” can never constitute grounds for removal unless a crime or a crime-like action is alleged.

However, for purposes of answering my threshold question I assumed what is alleged is true. And then I sought to answer the question of whether under these assumptions it would be in the interest of the nation to remove the President.

Determining which outcome is in the best interests requires a political judgment — one that takes into account both the severity of the wrongdoing alleged but also the impact removal would have on the nation.

I disagree with the House Managers’ argument that, if we find the allegations they have made are true, failing to remove the President leaves us with no remedy to constrain this or future Presidents. Congress and the courts have multiple ways by which to constrain the power of the executive. And ultimately, voters themselves can hold the President accountable in an election, including the one just nine months from now.

I also considered removal in the context of the bitter divisions and deep polarization our country currently faces. The removal of the President — especially one based on a narrowly voted impeachment, supported by one political party and opposed by another, and without broad public support — would, as Manager Nadler warned over two decades ago, “produce divisiveness and bitterness” that will threaten our nation for decades.

Can anyone doubt that at least half of the country would view his removal as illegitimate — as nothing short of a coup d’état? It is difficult to conceive of any scheme Putin could undertake that would undermine confidence in our democracy more than removal would.

I also reject the argument that unless we call new witnesses this is not a fair trial. They cannot argue that fairness demands we seek witnesses they did little to pursue.

Nevertheless, new witnesses that would testify to the truth of the allegations are not needed for my threshold analysis, which already assumed that all the allegations made are true.

This high bar I have set is not new for me. In 2014, I rejected calls to pursue impeachment of President Obama, noting that he “has two years left in his term,” and, instead of pursuing impeachment, we should use existing tools at our disposal to “limit the amount of damage he’s doing to our economy and our national security.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the President Pro Tempore Emeritus, once warned, “[A] partisan impeachment cannot command the respect of the American people. It is no more valid than a stolen election.”

His words are more true today than when he said them two decades ago. We should heed his advice. I will not vote to remove the President because doing so would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation.

VIDEO: We Are The News

February 2, 2020/in Commentary, Elections, News, Policy, Politics/by John Michael Chambers

Now that Rudy Giuliani has been activated, we can mark this as a critical and pivotal moment. Sure, there has been the “alternative media” for quite some time now, but this is different. And as Q, (QANON) has told us, we are the news.

Now with the most recent and incredibly dangerous and disruptive impeachment hoax behind us, we are now ramping up our offensive moves against the Deep State, the Democrats, and the Fake News. This well planned and calculated move, (timing is everything), with Rudy Giuliani being activated, indicates that a new phase in the battle to resurrect America, has begun. A battle of of which we are clearly, winning. Just today, I made a decision to begin to reveal and unload all the data and intel that must now see the light of day. Yes, it is time. Please subscribe to the “News Behind the News” which will soon be available on multiple platforms. The gloves are off!

Check out Rudy’s YouTube channel and subscribe to the “News Behind the News”. Request a copy of a free digital report that I have authored which includes over 50 links to alternative places to get information. Watch what now begins to unfold here in 2020 and beyond. We are truly in uncharted waters but the pendulum has shifted. The Deep State and its operatives are being exposed. We are at the “expose” stage. I refer you once again to steps six, seven and eight on the scale of discovery and action. The gig is up. They are panicking and False Flags will continue to ensue. Justice is coming. Take a win now that the President will be fully vindicated and acquitted. They, as I have stated all along, are all going down. Three cheers for our amazing commander in chief- hip-hip-hooray, hip-hip-hooray, hip-hip-hooray!

This Video Will Get Donald Trump Reelected

February 2, 2020/in Culture War, Elections, Policy, Politics, Video/by Dr. Rich Swier

The YouTube video below was posted by Berikande Mångfald. Mångfald states: “Donald Trump gives one of his best speeches in his campaign for the Presidential post 2016.”

This 2016 speech is still relevant today and will help reelect Donald J. Trump in 2020.

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Democrats Define Down Social Justice

Amicus Curiae Brief: ‘The House action against Trump was illegal attainder not valid impeachment.’

February 1, 2020/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Elections, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — In a historic first amicus curiae brief (“friend of the court brief”) ever filed with the Impeachment Court, Professor Victor Williams successfully set the Senate record straight:

“The House action against Trump was illegal attainder not valid impeachment.”

“An immediate Trump acquittal, without calling witnesses, is a formal and final nullification of the 116th House’s attempted illegal attainder,” said Williams in a statement released today. Trump was never impeached.

Williams’ amicus curiae brief, filed in full support of Donald Trump’s own trial brief, detailed how House Democrats conspired with deep-state bureaucrats and establishment “resistors” in an attempted attainder against Trump.

The brief was formally lodged with the Chief Justice as Presiding Officer at both the SCOTUS Clerk’s Office at the Supreme Court and at the Office of the Secretary of the Senate.

In a belt-and-suspenders “skeptical” procedure for the first-ever argument, Williams also had electronic and even print copies of the brief delivered directly to U.S. Senate offices.

Williams explained that his skepticism of the neutrality of the Chief Justice was sadly proven correct when John Roberts’ refused to read Senator Rand Paul’s question regarding the collusion of Adam Shift’s Intelligence Committee staff with deep-state treacherous operatives.

“So much for Chief Justice John Roberts acting as a ‘neutral umpire’ when deep state actors and media elites enter the high-stakes game,” said Williams today.

Williams is Chair of “Law Professors for Trump” (goplawyers.com) and is also a 2020 candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia against anti-Trump incumbent Mark Warner. (“Victor Williams 4 Virginia – vw4v.com).

The brief began (excepts with footnotes omitted):

This amicus curiae brief argues alternatively that the House action against Trump should be analyzed by this Court as an unconstitutional attainder meant to taint and stain Trump.

Amicus relies heavily on Professor Charles Black’s Impeachment: A Handbook to draw the Court’s attention to how the Constitution’s attainder ban restricts impeachment processes and further circumscribes its “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” impeachment standard.

This brief explains that our Constitution’s Framers explicitly rejected the abusive English legislative practice of using of attainders for the removal of public officers.

This brief presents the establishment of our uniquely American attainder ban as one of Alexander Hamilton’s great causes.

Amicus summarizes Supreme Court attainder jurisprudence on the protection of public officials from legislative removal and separation of powers norms.

Without such a prophylactic treatment of the House impeachment articles formally reflected in this Court’s record and certain acquittal verdict, amicus respectfully counsels that Senators may wish to adjust their 2020 schedules for an additional impeachment trial.

House lawyers confirmed plans for additional House impeachment hearings that are to likely lead to a second House impeachment of Trump during recent arguments before different panels of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The brief concluded:

The constitutional proscription against legislative punishment is a solid shield of individual liberty for all Americans including those individuals whose ideology is the subject of intense, passionate hatred.

In the context of this House action – an attainder wrapped in impeachment cloth — only the Senate transmuted into our nation’s High Court of Impeachment has authority and opportunity to take up Colonel Alexander Hamilton’s cause to insure that defamatory legislative attainders will never be allowed in America.

While campaigning since July 4, 2019, Senate candidate Williams has frequently condemned Mark Warner and other congressional Democrats’ abuse of Trump.

SOURCE Professor Victor Williams

FLORIDA: Congressional Candidate Laura Loomer Outraises Democrat Incumbent for the Second Time

February 1, 2020/in Culture War, Elections, News, Policy, Politics, Video/by Dr. Rich Swier

PALM BEACH, Fla, Jan. 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Republican candidate for Congress in Florida’s 21st District Laura Loomer announced that her campaign has raised $202,135 in the 4th Quarter of 2019, outraising Democrat Incumbent Lois Frankel for a second time.

The newest fundraising report proves momentum of the campaign with a 25% increase in contributions compared to the previous quarterly report.

During this cycle to date, over 7,000 donations have been received by the campaign from all 50 states with Florida residents being the top contributors. The average contribution was $56 proving widespread support among the voting public.

By contrast, Laura Loomer’s opponent, Congresswoman Lois Frankel received contributions from only 159 individuals during the 2019 election cycle, with an average gift of $856. Frankel received the majority of her donations from political action committees including Michael Bloomberg’s gun control PAC.

Frankel’s lack of public support is reflective of her absence within the district. In 2018, 2016, 2014, and 2012, Lois Frankel failed to obtain public support through petitioning and paid a total of $41,776 to have her name printed on the ballot each election year.

Loomer stated, “I’m grateful for the support of Floridians and the ongoing contributions from Americans across the nation. Our fundraising success is proof that our America First message resonates with a majority of the public.”

Karen Giorno, President Trump’s 2016 Florida State Director and chief strategist for the Loomer campaign commented, “It’s astonishing that a sitting member of Congress has only 159 donors to support a reelection campaign. The lack of effort by Lois Frankel is emblematic of her do-nothing tenure in Congress. She’s earned the name, ‘Lazy Lois’ .”

Loomer’s campaign has outraised Democrat incumbent Lois Frankel, as well as all primary challengers combined for the second quarter in a row, making her the undeniable Republican frontrunner against a formidable adversary in the General Election.

Giorno continued, “Unlike our opponent, Lois Frankel, our campaign doesn’t rely on large contributions from fat cat donors, teacher’s unions and Michael Bloomberg. We’ve had to work hard and reinvest donations to build a massive base of fundraising and grassroots support that will serve us through November.”

Loomer’s campaign contacted supporters through phone, text, email, Telegram, Parler and Gab over 7 million times in 2019 with campaign updates, calls-to-action and requests for donations. Throughout 2019, the campaign had no posts on Twitter or Facebook and no advertising dollars were spent on social media platforms.

Loomer closed by stating, “Despite being shut down by Big Tech, we’ve put in the hard work to stay connected with supporters on a daily basis. Now that’s it’s 2020, we’ll be applying those same efforts to connect with and engage voters in District 21. We’re winning this. This campaign will not be silenced.”

SOURCE Laura Loomer for Congress.

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VIDEO: Trump Super Bowl Ad — ‘Stronger, Safer, More Prosperous’

February 1, 2020/in Culture War, Elections, News, Policy, Politics, Video/by Dr. Rich Swier

Donald J Trump posted the below comments and Super Bowl political ad titled Stronger, Safer, More Prosperous on YouTube:

With President Trump in office he is improving the lives of ALL Americans. Under President Trump, the economy is booming, historic tax cuts were passed, trade deals have been rengotiated, and African-American, Asian American, and Hispanic American unemployment are all at RECORD LOWS!

Text TRUMP to 88022 for the latest news from the campaign

First Thoughts On the Trump Plan and How Mahmoud Abbas Will Save the Day by Hugh Fitzgerald

February 1, 2020/in Commentary, Elections, Opinion, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

“The Deal of the Century” turned out to be remarkably generous to the “Palestinians,” giving them far more than they had any right to expect. It promises them a state – the state of Palestine. It doubles the size of the territory under Palestinian control. The Palestinians will under the plan possess nearly 80% of the West Bank. They will also have their capital in East Jerusalem. The plan includes Palestinian use and management of facilities in Haifa and Ashdod ports, Palestinian development of a resort area in the north shore of the Dead Sea, and continued Palestinian agricultural activity in the Jordan Valley. Ultimately, the plan envisions “modern and efficient transportation links” through the future Palestinian state, including Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza will be linked through a tunnel.

Under the Trump plan, the Palestinians will be obligated to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad, must stop their Pay-For-Slay plan, must stop inciting terrorism, must end the rampant corruption in the PA, must respect human rights, and must guarantee a free press and religious freedom. We shall see if the PA is able to meet these conditions precedent to achieving a state. The PA’s record to date is not encouraging.

The plan also requires Israel to observe a four-year moratorium on any new settlements in the West Bank while negotiations with the Palestinians are going on, but says nothing about whether the moratorium would continue if, after four years, negotiations are still continuing. It makes provision for $50 billion in aid to be given to the Palestinians, as had previously been announced at the “Peace Through Prosperity” workshop in Manama last June. That is a huge sum, but who would pay it? One hopes that it will not be the Western Infidels paying for the Palestinians. The $50 billion ought by rights to come from fellow Muslim Arabs, those who live in the oil-rich states of the Gulf – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar.

The most important concession of all, according to Trump’s peace initiative, would be the recognition of a new state, the State of Palestine. This State of Palestine would have to agree to be disarmed, but how that disarmament would be enforced, and exactly what arms it would include, remains unclear.

Israel also gets certain concessions. Existing Israeli settlements (that is, towns and cities) in the West Bank would be recognized as sovereign Israeli territory. The Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinian refugees, or “refugees” (the quotation marks indicate that these are the descendants of refugees, not true refugees themselves) would be integrated into the countries where they now live. There would be no right of return.

Netanyahu and Gantz have both declared themselves pleased with Trump’s peace plan. But can they truly be pleased with the recognition of a State of Palestine, with its capital in East Jerusalem? Perhaps they are pleased because the plan is better than any of the previous plans presented by Trump’s predecessors, and because they know that Abbas will never accept it, so they needn’t worry. They can afford to be pleased. There is no other state in the world that has been successfully disarmed. How likely is it that a State of Palestine, full of Jihadis, could be permanently disarmed, and not become a source of terrorism against Israelis, whether living in the West Bank or elsewhere in Israel?

The plan is generally good, but I confess that I expected even better. I did not think this administration would recognize a State of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem. I envisioned instead an arrangement whereby the local Arabs (to be carefully referred to as “Palestinian Arabs”) in the West Bank would be given as much autonomy as was consonant with Israeli security, but not a state. The safer the Israelis, the greater the degree of local autonomy. I see that I was wrong.

However, there is one thing about this plan that makes it most welcome. And that is the assurance that neither Mahmoud Abbas, nor any of his successors in the Palestinian Authority, nor anyone in Hamas, will be willing to negotiate over this plan in good faith. The Palestinians rejected Trump’s plan before they knew what was in it; they reject it again now that they know what is in it. Much of the world will be able to see that even when the Palestinians are offered a state of their own, even when they are promised that that state’s capital will be in East Jerusalem, even when they are further promised $50 billion in aid, far more than any of the more than 100 developing countries have ever received In aid, that is not enough to satisfy them. They are the spoiled brats of the international community.

Other Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Oman, will urge the Palestinians to take the deal — “You get a state, you have your capital in Jerusalem, the Israelis have to stop building settlements, you’ll have 80% of the West Bank” – “or else.” “Or else” would mean only this: “We are tired of your whining, tired of the whole Palestinian problem; tired of your refusal to accept $50 billion in aid. We have so many bigger problems to think about, starting but not ending with Iran. Get with the program. Or count us out.” The refusal of the Palestinians to take the deal will only widen the gap between them and the other Arabs.

In agreeing to the Trump plan, Israel will have committed itself to not building new settlements in the West Bank for four years, while negotiations are going on. It’s a big concession. But if there are no negotiations, because the Palestinians continue to refuse enter into them, then the Trump administration has made clear that Israel is no longer required to refrain from settlement building. The Trump administration has noted that, in that case, it will support Israel should it decide to unilaterally incorporate other areas of the West Bank, beyond what it will already have annexed. And the offer of a State of Palestine will not be revived. And very few, at that point, will care.

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Palestinian Authority paid $150,000,000 to jihad terrorists as salaries in 2019

February 1, 2020/in Culture War, Elections, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

“PMW exclusive: PA gave 517.4 million shekels to terrorists as salaries in 2019,” by Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, January 30, 2020:

According to recently published Palestinian Authority financial reports, Palestinian Media Watch can expose that the PA has admitted to spending no less than 517.4 million shekels ($149.7 million/€136 million) paying salaries to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners in 2019.

The PA expenditure on allowances to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists was at least 151.6 million shekels in 2019. Accordingly, the total minimum PA expenditure in 2019 on its payments to terrorists and families of dead terrorists – its Pay-for-Slay policy- was 669 million shekels ($193.6 million/€175.8 million).

In accordance with the Israeli law, Defense Minister Naftali Bennet should present the National Security Cabinet with a report showing that the PA expenditure on its Pay-for-Slay policy was no less than 669 million shekels.

Israeli law demands that this figure be deducted from the monthly tax transfers Israel makes to the PA.

Background
Since created in 1994, the PA has implemented a “Pay-for-Slay” policy according to which it pays millions of shekels/dollars/euro every year in monthly salaries to reward Palestinian terrorist prisoners and released prisoners and monthly allowances to reward wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists (so-called “Martyrs”).

The PA codified the policy in the Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners in 2004. Since then, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has twice approved substantial hikes in the monthly salaries paid by the PA to the terrorists (2006, 2010).

According to sworn testimony given by a senior official on behalf of the PA, the PA payments to the wounded terrorists and families of dead terrorists are not codified in PA law, but rather only stipulated in undisclosed internal documents.

While the PA policy has been widely condemned, with four countries (Canada, the US, Australia, and Holland) cutting off all direct aid to the PA until the policy is abolished, and while the PA continues to request (and receive) considerable amounts of foreign aid, the PA itself carries on squandering hundreds of millions of shekels/dollars/euro on terrorist salaries every year, incentivizing and rewarding Palestinian terrorists.

In 2018, Israel passed a law to combat the PA policy. According to the law, at the end of each year, the Israeli Minister of Defense must submit a report to the National Security Cabinet detailing the PA expenditure on terrorist salaries and allowances in the passing year. Once the Cabinet approves the report, the PA expenditure in the passing year is deducted in twelve equal parts from the taxes that Israel collects and transfers to the PA in the coming year.

The new Israeli law was first implemented in February 2019, after PMW exposed that the PA had admitted to spending no less than 502 million shekels to pay the monthly salaries to the terrorist prisoners and released prisoners in 2018.

In response to the Israeli decision, Abbas positively decided to plunge the PA into a self-inflicted financial crisis by refusing to accept all the tax revenues from Israel, if Israel deducted any sum. Since the tax revenues account for almost half of the PA budget, rejecting their receipt had a substantial impact on the PA economy.

To overcome the crisis, the PA decided to temporarily cut salaries to the law abiding PA employees by 50% and to suspend referrals of Palestinians for medical treatment in Israeli hospitals. The PA also attempted to hide its financial reports, until PMW highlighted these actions. However, at the same time, the PA doubled down on its commitment to pay the terrorist prisoners, continuing to pay them 100% of their salaries.

After 7 months, the PA finally capitulated and agreed to receive the taxes that remained after the deduction.

Following an additional PMW report on the subject of the PA payments to the wounded and the families of the dead terrorists, in late December 2019 the Israeli National Security Cabinet decided to deduct an additional sum of 150 million shekels. Since the number of wounded Palestinian terrorists and the number of Palestinian terrorists killed grew in 2019, it is reasonable to assume that the PA expenditure for these terrorists grew.

According to statistics published by the PA and Israeli NGO B’tselem, no fewer than 110 Palestinian terrorists were killed in 2019. Taking into account the different PA payments, the additional expense incurred by the PA was no less than 1.6 million shekels.

During the presentation of his new Middle East peace plan, – the deal of the century – US President Donald Trump stressed the need for the PA to abolish its policy of rewarding terrorists and murderers:

“To ensure a successful Palestinian state, we are asking the Palestinians to meet the challenges of peaceful co-existence. This includes adopting basic laws enshrining human rights; protecting against financial and political corruption; stopping the malign activities of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other enemies of peace; ending the incitement of hatred against Israel — so important; and permanently halting the financial compensation to terrorists.”

[www.whitehouse.gov, Jan. 28, 2020]

Whether the PA will suddenly listen to US President Trump – for whom the PA has only shown contempt – only time will tell, but until then, Israel – if it wants to abide by its own laws – should deduct no less than 669 million shekels ($193.6 million/€175.8 million) from its tax transfers to the PA in 2020.

In the meantime, while most of the world agrees that the PA practice of paying financial rewards to terrorists is despicable, the PA continues to waste ever-growing amounts of fungible donor aid to fund this policy. To help put an end to the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” policy, the EU and more countries should make their aid conditional on the permanent abolishment of the policy.

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Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan a Much-Needed Dose of Reality

February 1, 2020/in Culture War, Elections, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by The Daily Signal

It’s unlikely that President Donald Trump’s new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan will succeed. Yet, it’s the best of any recent offerings because it dispels poisonous fictions that have held back negotiations for decades.

The reality is that there will never be a Palestinian “right of return” to Israel, since such a policy would destroy the Jewish character of the state.

Palestinians are not getting their great-granddads’ houses in Jaffa back any more than the hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Muslim lands after Israel’s 1948 war of independence are reclaiming their property.

The difference is that one of these groups accepted reality long ago.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Nor will Palestinians ever take control of Jerusalem proper. Any Israeli politician who broaches the notion of handing over the fulcrum of Jewish cultural, religious, and political identity to Fatah is engaging in an act of political suicide.

Palestinians have never administered Jerusalem, and they have no legitimate claim over Jerusalem. The current state of affairs is the status quo, whether Palestinians decide they want a state or not.

Likewise, Israelis will never pull back to pre-1967 lines, giving up its claims to the West Bank, because no sane nation would reinstitute unsecure borders next to an unreliable potential terror state.

The vast majority of Israelis who now reside in towns (“settlements”) built in historically Jewish areas aren’t going to be displaced because the United Nations or Ben Rhodes has declared Judea and Samaria a no-Jew zone. Those towns are part of a de facto border whether Palestinians agree to a deal or not.

Finally, there is no way that Israel, a liberal democracy responsible for the security of its citizens, can hand over the Jordan Valley—an area with immense strategic importance irrespective of the Palestinian situation—to a newly created state that allies itself with unsavory nations and entertains the idea of entering into a unity government with Hamas, the theocratic terror group. Perhaps, after peaceful coexistence for a few decades, this could change.

The Trump deal would simply codify these realities while allowing Palestinians finally to have a startup state. Trump’s plan is the first to offer a map laying out what the final borders of the Palestinian nation might look like.

In it, Israel cedes around 70% of the disputed territory in the West Bank to Palestinians but doubles its existing territory overall. “The sovereign capital of the State of Palestine,” the plan states, would be the city of “East Jerusalem.”

In return, Palestinians would recognize the existence of Israel, agree to solve their refugee problem through integration in their new state and in host Arab counties, and renounce terrorism. In other words, Palestinians would be asked to conduct themselves as does any normal, functioning state. The U.S. would also infuse $50 billion into the new Palestinian state.

Stateless peoples yearning for self-determination around the world—ethnic groups that Western elites don’t care a whit about—would, no doubt, be ecstatic for such an opportunity. Palestinians, however, happen to have chosen the right enemies.

They just have the wrong leaders. President Mahmoud Abbas hasn’t faced an electorate in 15 years and counting. His title of “president” falsely suggests that Abbas is the duly elected leader of a nation. Neither is true.

And although that is his own fault, Abbas and his deputies will no doubt sit in their U.N.-funded mansions while the Palestinian people suffer, waiting out Trump for more advantageous terms from a friendlier president such as Joe Biden—or Bernie Sanders, who could put Linda Sarsour in his administration.

But they won’t be able to wait out Israel. A nation with an open and vibrant economy has no reason to enter into a deal that upends its security. Most Israelis—I hate to break this to everyone—aren’t obsessed with the Palestinians.

Hamas is largely contained. Fatah is contained. Israel’s existence isn’t contingent on the creation of a Palestinian state, only on security.

Israel, in fact, probably feels less external pressure than ever to enter into a deal. Anyone who’s followed this issue understands the historic significance of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Oman sending envoys to the White House unveiling of Trump’s peace deal.

Arab nations are coming to terms with the reality of the Jewish state in ways that Americans progressives have not.

Nor is there more internal political pressure to enter into a bad deal. Benny Gantz, the Kahol Lavan leader and chief rival to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “hailed” the Trump plan because, despite the effort of the American left to cast Netanyahu as the sole impediment to peace, no major Israeli party on either the right or the left is going to agree to a right of return, a return to pre-1967 lines, or a surrender of Jerusalem.

In the past, Palestinian negotiators sat back and rejected one concession after the next. They offered ever-growing lists of grievances while American leaders tried to pacify them.

It’s about time someone injected a dose of this reality into this situation. Trump’s plan allows Palestinians to have a state in the world that exists. Or not.

COMMENTARY BY

David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.” Twitter: @davidharsanyi.

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4 Big Moments Before the Senate’s Vote Against New Impeachment Witnesses

February 1, 2020/in Courts & Law, Elections, Featured, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Signal

In the lead-up to the Senate vote not to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, another John Bolton bombshell dropped, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska rendered the debate moot, and the Senate chaplain almost stole the show.

About 5:40 p.m. Friday, the Senate voted 51-49 against calling witnesses, meaning the inevitable vote to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment will come soon. How soon is uncertain, but the final vote likely will be Wednesday.

Sens. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined all Democrats and two Independents in voting for new witnesses as Democrats sought to convict and remove Trump from office nine months before the presidential election.

The House impeached Trump on Dec. 18, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress and accusing Trump of tying military assistance to Ukraine to its agreement to investigate interference by the former Soviet republic in the 2016 U.S. election and the dealings there of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

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After the vote against calling new witnesses, senators went on to confer about finishing the Senate trial by Wednesday, which would be after Trump delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., noted the House had numerous witnesses and 28,000-plus pages of documents already in evidence, which he said is enough for a Senate trial.

“There is no need for the Senate to reopen the investigation, which the House Democratic majority chose to conclude and which the [House impeachment] managers themselves continue to describe as ‘overwhelming’ and ‘beyond any doubt,’” McConnell said in a formal statement.

“Never in Senate history has this body paused an impeachment trial to pursue additional witnesses with unresolved questions of executive privilege that would require protracted litigation,” McConnell said. “We have no interest in establishing such a new precedent, particularly for individuals whom the House expressly chose not to pursue.”

Here are highlights from the day on which the Senate heard arguments over calling witnesses.

1. Murkowski Decides

Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, was among four Republicans considering voting to call witnesses, particularly after The New York Times reported Sunday that a forthcoming book by Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, says Trump told Bolton that he sought to have the Ukraine government get information on Democrats.

To call new witnesses in addition to the 17 who testified in the House impeachment proceedings, it would have taken four Republicans to join the 47 senators in the Democrats’ caucus.

Romney announced that he would vote to hear new witnesses, after Collins already had done so.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., had announced late Thursday that he would vote against calling witnesses, saying: “The Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.”

Alexander’s announcement signaled that Democrats would not be able to gain a majority for witnesses.

However, House Democrat managers argued that Chief Justice John Roberts could break a tie, based on precedent from the 1868 Senate trial of President Andrew Johnson.

Just before 2 p.m., ending speculation about a tie, Murkowski announced on Twitter and in a formal statement that she would not vote for witnesses. She explained her reasons in a thread of five tweets in which she concluded that “the Congress has failed.”

(1/5) I worked for a fair, honest, and transparent process, modeled after the Clinton trial, to provide ample time for both sides to present their cases, ask thoughtful questions, and determine whether we need more.

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) January 31, 2020

(2/5) The House chose to send articles of impeachment that are rushed and flawed. I carefully considered the need for additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings of its process, but ultimately decided that I will vote against considering motions to subpoena.

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) January 31, 2020

(3/5) Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything.

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) January 31, 2020

(4/5) It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.

It has also become clear some of my colleagues intend to further politicize this process, and drag the Supreme Court into the fray, while attacking the Chief Justice.

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) January 31, 2020

2. Flap Over Chaplain’s Prayer

The Senate chaplain, Barry Black, who has opened each day of the trial with a prayer, made news with a prayer Friday that spurred media and social media speculation that Black was pushing senators for witnesses or a specific outcome.

“Remind our senators that they alone are accountable to you for their conduct,” Black said in the prayer. “Lord, help them to remember that they can’t ignore you and get away with it. For we always reap what we sow.”

Black, a retired Navy rear admiral, became the 62nd Senate chaplain in 2003.

The Baltimore native was commissioned as a Navy chaplain in 1976. His first duty station was the Fleet Religious Support Activity in Norfolk, Virginia.

3. New Bolton Revelations

Before the Senate debate on witnesses, The New York Times dropped another big story about Bolton, who Democrats wanted to call as a witness. Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador who resigned last year as Trump’s national security adviser, has a book coming out in March.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., leader of the seven House impeachment managers, read parts of the Times article on the Senate floor. Later, excerpts were shown on a large screen.

“Today,” Schiff said, “we were greeted to yet another development in the case when The New York Times reported with a headline that says, ‘Trump told Bolton to help his Ukraine pressure campaign, book says.’”

“According to The New York Times, more than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.,” Schiff said, reading from the Times.

The Times reported that the meeting included Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

Cipollone leads the president’s defense team at the Senate trial.

“You will recall Mr. Cipollone suggesting that the House managers were concealing facts from this body. He said all the facts should come out,” Schiff said. “Well, there is a new fact, which indicates that Mr. Cipollone was among those in the loop. Yet another reason why we ought to hear from witnesses.”

House manager Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., warned senators about the judgment of history, since all the facts will come out sooner or later.

“The truth continues to come out, again in an article today, more information,” Crow said. “The truth will come out—and it’s continuing to. The question here, before this body, is what do you want your place in history to be? Do you want your place in history to be let’s hear the truth, or that we don’t want to hear it?”

4. Trump Should ‘Prove’ Innocence

Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, argued that if Trump really is innocent, he would want witnesses:

If the president is telling the truth, and he did nothing wrong, and the evidence would prove that, then we all know he would be an enthusiastic supporter for subpoenas. He would be here probably himself if he could, urging you to do subpoenas if he had information proving he was totally not in the wrong. If he is innocent, he should have nothing to hide.

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow later countered that the House prosecution team seems to suggest the president must prove his innocence, which is not how the system works.

“You’re not going to have a witness wand here, where we say, OK, you’ve got a week to do this and get it done,” Sekulow said. “There is no way that would be proper under due process.”

Sekulow noted that the House had 17 witnesses, 13 of whom testified in public. Further, he said, 192 video clips were shown from that public witness testimony during the course of the Senate trial.

Only the House took testimony. Sekulow said that for a fair trial, the president’s legal team would have the right to cross-examine each witness:

Due process is supposed to be for the person accused and they are turning it on its head. They brought the articles [of impeachment] before you. They are the ones who rushed the case up and then held it before you could actually start the proceedings. They are the ones who passed the articles before Christmas.

Sekulow added that the House Intelligence Committee, which Schiff chairs, opted not to subpoena Bolton, fearing it would delay a House impeachment vote into the new year.

Sekulow appealed to the Senate, saying it wasn’t their job to clean up after the House’s lack of a thorough investigation.

“How many constitutional challenges will we have in this body because they placed a burden on you that they wouldn’t take themselves in putting their case forward?” Sekulow said.

“We look at our constitutional framework and our constitutional structure. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” he said.

Ken McIntyre contributed to this report.

COLUMN BY